Ubuntu Muslim Edition is yet another free and open source operating system based on the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution. What makes this one special? Well, it comes customized with Islamic software, like prayer times or an Arabic learning software. This special edition of Ubuntu Linux also features GUI improvements, a customized splash screen, GDM login, a wallpaper and it comes with Firefox bookmarks for the Islamic community. "Ubuntu is a great distro, easy to use for a beginner user, with the most-used Office, Internet, Graphics and Video applications already installed. So we think that for Muslim users it could be great to have "out of the box" Islamic softwares and tools installed as well." - says the Ubuntu Muslim team.


Software Included:

￭ Minbar (prayer times)
￭ Zekr (Quran study tool)
￭ Ekiga Softphone
￭ Evolution Mail Client
￭ Firefox Web Browser
￭ Gaim Internet Messenger
￭ Terminal Server Client
￭ OpenOffice.org Suite (Database, Presentation, Spreadsheet, Word Processor)


￭ Totem Movie Player
￭ Rhythmbox Music Player
￭ Serpentine Audio CD Creator
￭ Sound Juicer CD Extractor
￭ Java 4 Runtime Environment
￭ Multimedia codecs (Bad and Ugly)
￭ Flash 9 Plugin
...and a lot of GNOME board games like: AisleRiot Solitare, Ataxx, Five or More, FreeCell Solitare, Mahjongg, Mines, Nibbles and more.


Minbar is the first application that appears when you login into the GNOME session. Minbar is an Islamic prayer times application on top of libitl, the Arabeyes prayer calculation library. It runs in background as a tray icon, plays the 'athan' (call to prayer) and notifies at prayer times. The Minbar software works with the main calculation methods (Muslim League by default, Shafii, Hanafi, ...).


On the other hand, the Zekr software is a Quran based project, planned to be a universal, open source, cross-platform application to perform most of the usual references to Quran. In other words, it's a Quran study tool for browsing and researching on the Holy Quran.


Ubuntu Muslim Edition is based on version 6.10 (Edgy Eft) of Ubuntu Linux. It's composed entirely of open source components, which have been heavily modified for ease of use and migration for users familiar with Microsoft Windows. The name Ubuntu is derived from the Zulu word for humanity, which has been incorporated into South African culture as "humanity towards others".


Even if it's a Live CD, Ubuntu Muslim Edition can also be installed on the hard drive if you like it, with the help of a very easy to use, wizard-based installer. Please see the screenshots below.


Please remember that this second release of the Ubuntu Muslim Edition is for testing purposes only and you should not install it on a production environment system. However, it looks pretty stable at this point. If you want to report bugs, problems or just to discuss with the project developers about how they can improve it, I suggest you take a look at their bilingual (English and French) forum here.

You can download Ubuntu Muslim Edition now from Softpedia.